Tickle your funny bone with the genealogy
funnies. Take a look at the lighter side of the hobby we all love!

The Good Ole Days??

Rules and Regulations

By Geiger, 1872

Office employees will daily sweep the
floors, dust the furniture, shelves, and showcases.

Each day fill lamps, clean chimneys, and
trim wicks. Wash the windows once a week.

Each clerk will bring in a bucket of water
and a scuttle of coal for the day's business.

Make your pens carefully. You may whittle
nibs to your individual taste.

This office will open at 7 a.m. and close
at 8 p. m. daily except on the Sabbath, on which day it will remain closed.

Men employees will be given an evening off
each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they go regularly to church.

Every employee should lay aside from each
pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefits during his declining, so that he will
not become a burden upon the charity of his betters.

Any employee who smokes Spanish cigars,
uses liquor in any form, gets shaved at a barber shop, or frequents pool or public halls
will give a good reason to suspect his worth, intentions, integrity and honesty.

The employee who has performed his labor
faithfully and without faults for a period of five years in my service and who has been
thrifty and attentive to his religious duties and is looked upon by his fellow men as a
substantial and law-abiding citizen will be given an increase of five cents per day,
providing a just return of profits from the business permits it.

And you thought the rules of today's workplaces were tough!

Life in the 1500's

Discover how some of today's sayings and
customs originated.

You will be surprised!

Most people got married in June.
Why? They took their yearly bath in May. In June, they were still
smelling pretty good but were starting to smell so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to
hide their body odor.

When they took a bath, they would fill a
big tub with hot water. The man of the house would get the privelige of the nice
clean water. Then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the
children. Last of all, the babies. By that time the water was pretty
thick.....thus the saying;"don't trhow the baby out with the bath water."

The water was so
dirty, you could actually lose someone in it.

A Little about the houses........

Most of the houses had
a thatch roof. Thatch meant thick straw, piled high with no wood underneath.
Little animals would get in the thatch roof to stay warm. All the cats, dogs, mice,
rats, bugs and other small animals lived in the roof. When it rained, it became
slippery and wet so sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.....thus the
saying; "It's raining
cats and dogs."

Since there was nothing to stop
things from falling into the house, they would just try to clean up a lot. This
posed a real problem in the bedroom, where bugs and other droppings from animals could
really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found if they would make beds with big posts
and hang a sheet over the top, it would prevent that problem. Hence..."4 poster beds with canopies".

Most houses had dirt floors.
Only the wealthy had something other than dirt....thus the saying; "dirt poor"

Wealthy
people had slate floors but in the winter they would get slippery when they got wet.
To solve this problem, thye started spreading thresh on the floor to help keep
their footing. As the winter wore on, they would just keep adding more thresh until
when they opened the door it would all start slipping outside. So....they put a
piece of wood at the entry way...."a
thresh hold".

In the
kitchen, they would hang
a big kettle over the fire. Every day they would light the fire and start adding
things to the pot. Mostly they ate vegetables and didn't get much meat. They
would eat the stew for dinner, they leave the leftovers in the pot to get cold over
night and then start all over the next day. Sometimes the stew would have food in it
that had been in there for a month! Thus the rhyme....."peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge
in the pot nine days old."

Sometimes, they would get their
hands on some pork. This was a special occasion. When company would come over,
they had a rack in the parlor where they would bring out some bacon and hang it up to show
it off. It was a sign of wealth and that a man could really "bring home the bacon".They would cut off a little to share with their
guests and they would all sit around and
"chew the fat"

If you had money, your plates were
made of pewter. Sometimes food with a high acid content caused lead to leach out
into the food. They really noticed it happened with tomatoes.
So they stopped eating tomatoes for 400 years!

Most people didn't have pewter
plates though. They had trenchers. Trenchers were pieces of wood with the
middle scooped out like a bowl. Often times, worms would get into the wood.
After eating from the trencher with worms, they would get "trench mouth".

If you were traveling and stayed
an an Inn, they usually served bread. The bread was divided according to status.
The workers would get the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family would get the middle
and the guests would get the top or
"upper crust".

A little about
death.......

They also had lead cups and when
they would drink ale or whiskey from them, the combination would sometimes knock them out
for a couple of days. This caused people to think they were dead. They would
pick them up, take them home and get them ready to bury. They would lay them out on
the kitchen table for a couple of days, the family would gather around to eat, drink and
wait to see if they would wake up. Thus the custom of holding a "wake".

Since England is so old and small,
they started running out of places to bury people. So, they started digging up
coffins, taking the bones out and reusing the graves. This is when they discovered
that some of the coffins had scratch marks on the inside. One out of 25 coffins were
this way and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they decided they
would tie a string on their wrist and lead it through the coffin, up through the ground
and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to
listen for the bell. Thus the saying
"graveyard shift".If the bell would ring they would know that someone was "saved by the bell"or he was a "dead ringer"

Census
Finder - A
Directory of free census records online and information about researching
census records. This site also offers directories of genealogy
societies and historical museums. New at CensusFinder is a section
called Census
Findings which is devoted to
questions
asked in the census for each US Federal census year:

At this site you will not only find free
genealogy search engines and sources but a large collection of Family
Bibles which I have transcribed and posted the actual images from.
Stop by and take a peek to see if we have any of your ancestors in our
Family
Bible Records. Another great section is
Obituary Search which includes the Obituary Search Portal and links
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indexes and
newspaper obituaries online.